Knowing Better
by grab bag
Summary: A one-shot that attempts to answer several questions about who Patrick is.


My second Newsies fic! This is a speculation as to what happened to Patrick, since the only fics out there about him all say he died. I disagree- there are worse things than death. What happened to him, I think, is one of these things.

This is in second person, which does NOT make it a "you-based" fic. This is a one shot, and you have no impact on the story. Also not an RPG, "choose-your-own-adventure," or in any way "reader interactive" beyond what you see on the page. I'm saying this so nobody reports me and gets me unfairly suspended for a confusing rule that is crap in the first place. Thank you.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. No money is being made. That's about it, I think.

* * *

_Patrick, darling,_

_Since you left me I am undone._

_Mother loves you,_

_God save my son._

__

Every day.

Every single goddamn day she walks through the gathered newsies, crying the same plea, as if today, today may be the day she finds him. As if one day he'll emerge from the sea of orphans and runaways to meet her embrace, he can return home, and all will be well.

You know better.

You know Patrick's story well. How he joined the ragged army quietly, unobtrusively. How one day he just showed up, snuck into the purchase line, bought his ten papes to sell that day, acquired a soft grey cap with the day's profit, and became one of them. How nobody ever gave him a second glance, how he could blend into the crowd or not show up at all and nobody would think twice about it.

You know how his heart raced the first time the woman searched the group, wondering if she would find him, recognize him. You know how torn he was between the instinct to return home and the intellect that told him to stay. You know his mixed emotions of relief and disappointment when she passed him by, when her eyes slid right over him in her now useless search.

How could she not see what was right in front of her? You often wondered what she would say. If she knew that the boy she never noticed was the very one she now pined for, would she connect the two? She made her pleas to God, searching for her little boy who was not so little anymore, but she'd never noticed that either. Would she regret what she had done?

Of course she'd never beat him, you know that. Nothing that bad. Those kids usually kept running. Many of them had ended up in Brooklyn, Harlem, or further. Patrick's motives were simpler, just as painful, had landed him hidden in plain sight, and always just a hair's breadth out of reach

How could she not see what was right in front of her?

Easily. She'd never really seen him in the first place.

Just as she could not see him now. How he could blend so neatly, so seamlessly in amongst strangers and be mistaken as one of them. He was just as much a stranger to her as those boys anyway.

Her own son.

You wonder how. How she never noticed him until he wasn't there anymore. How someone could dare ask God for so much when they never deserved it. How selfish one person can be. How hope can disappear so quickly from the truly wronged and linger as a mere shell on a self-proclaimed victim. How she could have spoken more with God than her son. And how she could be taken seriously by everyone except the person she was looking for.

After a while you stopped noticing she was there. Even as she asked the newsies for help ("Have you seen Patrick?"), she was just another face, just another body, another voice. How she slipped away from your world and your reality.

Just as you had done with hers.

You may well have been an orphan.

Maybe you'd have been better off that way.

You sense more than see your mother walk away, shoulders pitifully hunched, as she does every day. Every goddamn day. You know she'll be back again tomorrow, crying the same plea, begging your forgiveness, God's forgiveness, searching for someone who had hardly existed in her world to begin with. Searching, but never finding, almost with reluctance, but looking every day out of empathy-evoking habit. Hoping that she'll finally be able see you.

But you know better.


End file.
